Ethnographical collections from East Greenland. 



643 



off, e. g. by being pushed out to the sea and they are now supposed 

 to make their way towards the person to be attacked or inj'ured. 



Mitsuarnianga told me that the tupilaks may have very dif- 

 ferent shapes: i. e. they are shaped like human figures (dolls) or 

 birds, seals, dogs, etc., often only a part of an 

 animal e. g. the head of a dog. But a man may 

 also, especially if he is iliseetsoq (versed in witch- 

 craft), pursue his enemy by means of a simpler 

 medium, namely by placing a strip of seal skin 

 of only a finger's length, loaded with imprecations, 

 under the foot of the person pursued; if his 

 enemy by accident places his foot on this strip, 

 it will injure him, possibly even kill him. Still 



a 



Fig. 365. Tupilak monsters (Petersen and Thalbitzer colls.). ^Ig. 



better than the seal-skin is however a piece of skin from the crown 

 of a dead man's head. Aleqwajik (old woman) added to the above- 

 mentioned kinds of tupilak the following : the after-birth of a delivered 

 woman, or a still-born child (aijiaq). 



Fig. 365 a is a wooden model of a tupilak, which Mitsuarnianga 

 had once made himself and which he assured me in good faith, 

 that he had seen later moving or creeping across the water in the 

 neighbourhood of Qernertuartiwin in the Ammassalik Fjord. The 

 real tupilak which in his capacity of angakoq he had created and 

 made living in the usual way (see p. 100) was a sandpiper (Trinca 



41* 



